Just Kids Quotes
"The sight of [the swan] generated an urge I had no words for, a desire to speak of the swan, to say something of its whiteness, the explosive nature of its movement, and the slow beating of its wings."
"I was born on a Monday, in the North Side of Chicago during the Great Blizzard of 1946."
"My mother taught me to pray; she taught me the prayer her mother taught her."
"It pleased me to imagine a presence above us, in continual motion, like liquid stars."
"My love of prayer was gradually rivaled by my love for the book."
"I could scale the Himalayas and live in a cave spinning a prayer wheel, keeping the earth turning."
"Through the years these roles would reverse, then reverse again, until we came to accept our dual natures."
"I was a dreamy somnambulant child. I vexed my teachers with my precocious reading ability paired with an inability to apply it to anything they deemed practical."
"My father introduced me to science fiction and for a time I joined him in investigating UFO activity in the skies over the local square-dance hall."
"I was unhappy when we were evicted from The Patch and had to pack up to begin a new life in southern New Jersey."
"I had no proof that I had the stuff to be an artist, though I hungered to be one."
"I wondered if I had really been called as an artist. I didn’t mind the misery of a vocation but I dreaded not being called."
"I cherished the idea that one day I would write a book."
"One cannot imagine the mutual happiness we felt when we sat and drew together."
"What matters is the work: the string of words propelled by God becoming a poem, the weave of color and graphite scrawled upon the sheet that magnifies His motion."
"To achieve within the work a perfect balance of faith and execution."
"Artistic drives...understood that what matters is the work."
"We learned we wanted too much. We could only give from the perspective of who we were and what we had."
"Where does it all lead? What will become of us? These were our young questions, and young answers were revealed."
"Sometimes I’d luck out and there would be several images he could use in an existing piece."
"He was always taking a chance on the contents."
"It’s hard to convey the speed at which our lives changed in the following months."
"Who can know the heart of youth but youth itself?"
"We were both dreamers, but Robert was the one who got things done."
"The night of the shoes, as we came to call it, was for Robert a sign that we were on the right path."
"I would say, 'How do you know?' And he’d reply, 'Because I know.'"
"It seemed as if they were all after him, male and female, but at the time Robert was motivated by ambition, not sex."
"I don’t want to sing. I just want to write songs for him. I want to be a poet, not a singer."
"It was clear we were not ready to go out on our own."
"I had a lot of thinking to do about what direction I should be taking."
"I was both scattered and stymied, surrounded by unfinished songs and abandoned poems."
"When I told Robert of my child-self’s desire to shatter windows, he teased me about it."
"We fell into the pattern of our new life quickly."
"The room was packed. Robert arrived with David."
"I felt increasingly out of place in Robert’s social whirl."
"I decided to back off. I turned down the record contract but left Scribner’s to work for Steve Paul as his girl Friday."
"I tried to apply this lesson to the things at hand, careful not to take spoils that were not rightfully mine."
"You can’t make a mistake when you improvise."
"Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not mine."